The Fall of V (The Henchmen MC 13)

There was little I could call redeemable about the woman. Maybe only that she instructed her men not to actually rape me. Though she clearly didn't have as much control over them as she thought she did, as they certainly tried a time or two.

Other than that, well, she had her only daughter kidnapped, beaten, sliced open, starved, and degraded for months. Just to get control over her father's importing business.

Ferryn was being used much like I had been so long ago.

Except, in this case, we had no idea why.

V didn't want the arms trade, so she wasn't looking for Reign to give it up.

But he had been a big part of how she ended up losing her empire, why she had been thrown into a cell, held captive by the man she had spent her life trying to stay away from - my father.

She had a lot of years in that space to think. And plot. And seek her escape.

That idiot Marco Abruzzo had just opened her cage, without stopping to think that she was locked up for a reason, that she was dangerous, that she was uncontrollable.

As if gunning down my father right in front of my eyes wasn't bad enough.

No.

Now was not the time for that.

That was an old pain, a dull ache that hurt when it rained.

This was new, raw, gaping, bleeding openly.

My daughter.

In a dark place surrounded by men with leering eyes and predatory hands, unsure what was going to happen to her, if this was how her short life was going to end.

The cold washed over my skin, prickling the flesh with goosebumps, making my stomach turn itself upside down, as I did nothing. Paced.

I hated feeling useless, having no way to help.

Reign's men were scouring the areas. Janie and Alex and whatever other computer geniuses there were in town - or even abroad - were scouring cameras for a direction, for a spotting of the car that Vance had pointed out.

I felt for them too, Vance and Iggy and Heather, who had witnessed another sword swipe of an underground war they should have been nowhere near, that kids, in general, should have been nowhere near.

It's not like it was in the old days, Janie had agreed once when we were sitting in the makeshift toy room for the kids at Hailstorm for the tenth day in a row, all of us going a little crazy. When wives and kids were all off limits. We're part of the game now. Pawns to be moved around the board on the way to a win.

I had thought about this more times than I could count over the years whenever there was something going on in Navesink Bank that made guns and knives and hiding out a possibility - that this was no life for a kid, that it was selfish to bring them into it, that it was too dangerous, no matter how strong the urge to be a mother was.

Not that I regretted it. My kids, they meant the world to me. Ferryn with her fearlessness, her confidence, her sharp mind, Fallon with his quiet intensity that reminded me of Reign, and Finn with his calm, laid-back, kind and sweet nature, a little mini imitation of his Uncle Cash.

They were the lights of my life, the physical embodiment of Reign and my love for each other.

I wouldn't trade them for anything - not even all the years of sleepless nights back.

But it had been wrong to expose them to this life, to this danger.

They were all at risk, but none so much as Ferryn, whose femaleness could be used against her, who had the potential for her first introduction to the ways of men and women forced upon her in pain and blood and violence.

And that was my fault.

I put her at that risk.

For bringing her into this battle, sure.

But also for not preparing her for the enemies lying in wait.

Sure, I had insisted on her self-defense, even when Reign fought me on it, when Lo suggested that maybe she needed a couple days off.

I made sure she knew how to use her body to defend herself, how to use someone else's body against them.

I never wanted her to feel as helpless as I once had.

But that wasn't enough, I could see now.

Because while Ferryn was a bit of a handful, was always pushing the limits to see if they were there, was maybe firmly planted in a rebellious stage, she was a reasonable young woman.

Had I sat her down finally and told her, laid it all right there out on the table, all the raw and wet and ugly, all the pain and fear and humiliation, if I had openly shown her my scars instead of rushing to cover them when she might have gotten a look, if I had shown her the brand that I myself tried never to think about - burning flesh a scent I could never fully get out of my nose - she would have understood. The rules. The limitations. The armed guards.